History of Valentines Day

Valentine's Day occurs annually on February 14th. This is one of the few facts that we can say for sure, since the exact origins of the holiday are uncertain.

Many experts believe that it originated with "Lupercalia", an ancient roman festival that was celebrated on February 15th, to honor the roman god Lupercus, who watched over their shepherds and flocks. This festival can be traced back as far as the fourth century B.C. At Lupercalia, a lottery would be held in which the names of all the young women in the city were placed into a box. The young men of the city would then draw a name from the box and the couple would be paired together, for their mutual entertainment and pleasure, until the next Lupercalia. Determined to put an end to this eight-hundred-year-old practice, the early Catholic Church fathers sought a "lovers" saint to replace the deity Lupercus. They found a likely candidate in Valentine, a Christian priest who had been martyred about two hundred years earlier.

In Rome in A.D. 270, Valentine had enraged the mad emperor Claudius II, who had issued an edict forbidding marriage. Claudius felt that married men made poor soldiers, because they were loath to leave their families for battle. The empire needed soldiers, so Claudius, never one to fear unpopularity, abolished marriage. Valentine, a bishop, seeing the trauma of young lovers, met them in a secret place, and joined them in the sacrament of matrimony. Claudius learned of this "friend of lovers," and had him arrested. The emperor, impressed with the young priest's dignity and conviction, attempted to convert him to the roman gods, to save him from certain execution. Valentine refused to recognize Roman Gods and even attempted to convert the emperor, knowing the consequences fully.

On February 24, 270, Valentine was executed. History also claims that while Valentine was in prison awaiting execution, he fell in love with the blind daughter of the jailer, Asterius. Through his unswerving faith, he miraculously restored her sight. He signed a farewell message to her "From Your Valentine," a phrase that would live long after its author died.

From the Church's standpoint, Valentine seemed to be the ideal candidate to usurp the popularity of Lupercus. So in A.D. 496, a stern Pope Gelasius outlawed the mid-February Lupercian festival. But it was reworked to fit a martyr theme since early and medieval Christianity did not approve of rituals that involved sexuality. However, the lottery was retained, since he was aware of Romans' love for games of chance. Now into the box that had once held the names of available and willing single women were placed the names of saints. Both men and women extracted slips of paper, and in the ensuing year they were expected to emulate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn. Admittedly, it was a different game, with different incentives; to expect a woman and draw a saint must have disappointed many a Roman male. The spiritual overseer of the entire affair was its patron saint, Valentine. With reluctance, and the passage of time, more and more Romans relinquished their pagan festival and replaced it with the Church's holy day. Traditionally, mid-February was the roman time to meet and court prospective mates. They began to institute the custom of offering women they admired and wished to court handwritten